13 ms·

We coerced young, low-risk people into receiving these treatments despite known side effects on pain of losing their education or employment or being able to en

by danhak 4y ago

We coerced young, low-risk people into receiving these treatments despite known side effects on pain of losing their education or employment or being able to enter privately-owned establishments (irrespective of the wishes of the owners of those privately-owned establishments). We justified it with the specious argument that they were putting other people at undue risk by remaining unvaccinated. We claimed that vaccinated people would not spread the virus. And we gave the companies producing these vaccines blanket legal immunity from any potential liability.

scarmig 4y ago
Why should the companies be held liable? This was a government project enforced by the gun; the companies didn't force anyone to take their vaccines, and there's not a way they could have made them meaningfully safer given the timelines.
- krona 4y ago
  Then why did most of them sell it for profit?
- burner990 4y ago
  My employer wouldn't let me go to the office or even any offsites or outdoor actives (i.e. a picnic) until very recently. (Despite my approved religious exemption and "requiring" all employees to work in the office). If that isn't coercion to take an experimental vaccine i don't know what is.
  - threeseed 4y ago
    a) I wouldn't class it as experimental when hundreds of millions of people have taken it. b) It sounds like your employer did the right thing to balance your rights versus those of the people you work with.
    - addingadimensio 4y ago
      If an experiment is big enough it becomes a statistic
    - burner990 4y ago
      > I wouldn't class it as experimental when hundreds of millions of people have taken it. that just means we're experimenting on hundreds of millions in real time. That was the whole point of the "emergency use". > your rights versus those of the people you work with no, employees don't have a legal "right" to work in a fully vaccinated office. That would imply that even if an employer wanted to give someone an exemption, then any employee could veto it.
  - curiousgal 4y ago
    > approved religious exemption The wording is a telltale sign that the exemption is pure BS.
    - TheCrownedFox 4y ago
      You might not like that the exemption exists, but it's legal in the USA. Would you rather that religious beliefs were not respected by the government?
      - oneoff786 4y ago
        I would prefer the government was completely indifferent to religious beliefs. Because any belief can be construed as religious if you’re willing to take the position that religion is stupid and you don’t care about optics. So yeah, I would prefer beliefs not garner you special privileges
        TheCrownedFox 4y ago
        What special privileges are being garnered? The topsy-turvy world of the religious person existing as the exception rather than the rule is quite odd to me. But regardless, in the USA the religious exemption policy is incredibly diverse and welcoming, you are correct on that. You do not even need to communicate with your God in expressible ways to other people. What should be the limit on someone's divine communication and the restrictions upon the government they live under?
        oneoff786 4y ago
        > What special privileges are being garnered? The exemption > What should be the limit on someone's divine communication and the restrictions upon the government they live under? None. But your definition of divine communication should not override otherwise unrelated rules.
        TheCrownedFox 4y ago
  - lazyasciiart 4y ago
    Seems reasonable to me. They want everyone to be at the office and vaccinated, but they’re not allowed to fire you because “religion”, so they made special accommodations to let you continue working without making all of their other employees have to be around you. You appear to be mad that your “exemption” wasn’t enough to make them pretend you were vaccinated?
    - burner990 4y ago
      But no accommodation to go to the company (outdoor) events and hear talks from the executives? > You appear to be mad that your “exemption” wasn’t enough to make them pretend you were vaccinated? I had blood test proof of antibodies but its just about "feel goods". And they didn't require boosters, just the first 2 doses from over a year ago, so yes its non-sensical and purely political (not based on science).
Eisenstein 4y ago
We require young people to get vaccinated as a rule in order to obtain education. Every medical intervention involves risks. So does taking a shower or taking the bus to school. We all have to take risks and some of them are mandated for the good of society. There were very good indications that the vaccine would prevent spread. Public policy decisions which cost lives are not unusual and although tragic, are often necessary. For instance should we use the entire yearly budget of a hospital to cure one child, or let that child die in order to fund daily operations? These questions have no 'right' answer and no matter what was decided there is going to be criticism and errors which result in less than optimal or even tragic outcomes. Looking back in hindsight and using the knowledge we now have, I would say that the biggest errors made during the pandemic by public policymakers (besides disbanding the pandemic team and having a leader who was looking at everything in the lens of a what was personally good for him at that moment) was in messaging. If we can use this to craft a better way to handle public messaging in the future then perhaps we can avoid a lot of the negative societal effects which we are now dealing with -- specifically lack of trust in scientific institutions, division based on ideology and not evidence, and the spread and enabling of conspiratorial thinking.
- blue039 4y ago
  - dang 4y ago
    Could you please not fulminate and call names in HN comments? You can make your substantive points without any of that, and it would be in your interest, because comments like this only discredit your viewpoint. I realize how frustrating it is to hold a minority/contrarian view, but why hand people flaming reasons to dismiss you? All it does is weaken your own position, and you're poisoning the ecosystem by doing it. You can weaken your position if you want to, but it's not ok to poison the ecosystem. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- hammock 4y ago
  >There were very good indications that the vaccine would prevent spread. Now that we know that to be not true, do you support removing the covid jab from the schedule required in school?
prpl 4y ago
it’s not entirely likely the dead were at a low-risk of death by the actual virus
lanstin 4y ago
As we also coerce babies into screening for various diseaaes and for vax against the diseases that afflict societies without this science. That is how it works. That is why we mostly don't die from infectious diseases for the first time since we built cities.
- gfodor 4y ago
  Not for an emergency use drug that doesn’t maintain herd immunity for a disease that is minimally harmful to children and is under immense selective pressure to break out of the vaccine. Maybe you’ve got a bad mental model because of the word “vaccine.” This is not a vaccine of the kind we give children, in terms of what it prevents and the extent of data and knowledge we have of its side effects.
  - spacefracas 4y ago
    This is incorrect. Of the vaccines that are given to children, none prevent infection. All significantly prevent disease and death.
    - gfodor 4y ago
      This feels like pure revisionism. The purpose of the vaccination programs for children is not to prevent severe disease or death, though that is a nice benefit. The purpose, and manifested effect, is to maintain population herd immunity due to the fact these vaccines radically reduce the chance of the child acting as a vector. The consequence is a vastly reduced incidence rate across the whole population due to this network effect vs a scenario with no mandate. This was widely understood to be the ethical justification for mandating these vaccines: it led to a collective benefit, counterfactually preventing massive suffering across many individual, a benefit which outweighs the risk to the individual from taking these drugs. This fundamental premise is entirely not the case for this vaccine program, which does not come close to helping with herd immunity for a disease we now acknowledge is endemic, and also happens to have a wildly different relative risk profile for children vs the other vaccines we mandate.
Ensorceled 4y ago
> We claimed that vaccinated people would not spread the virus. Who is "we", I have never seen anything other the claims that there were claims. Can you point me to an epidemiologist that made this claim. > And we gave the companies producing these vaccines blanket legal immunity from any potential liability. We have ALWAYS given vaccine companies blanket legal immunity. This isn't a new thing and there are good reasons for it.
- hammock 4y ago
  >Who is "we", I have never seen anything other the claims that there were claims. Can you point me to an epidemiologist that made this claim. https://twitter.com/guccibase/status/1488297386208378889 https://twitter.com/guccibase/status/1488297386208378889 Included in the video: Rochelle Walensky, Monica Gandhi
  - Ensorceled 4y ago
    Ah, by "we", you mean politicians. These clowns are also all saying it's 100% effective which was known to be false from day 1.
    - hammock 4y ago
      You asked for an epidemiologist. I gave you two of the world's foremost practicing infectious disease experts : Rochelle Walensky, MD, MPH, Mass General chief of Infectious Diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital; and Monica Gandhi MD, MPH, Associate Chief of the Division of HIV, Infectious Diseases, and Global Medicine at UCSF. It seems you're being intellectually dishonest
      - ceejayoz 4y ago
        Monica Gandhi has been repeatedly wrong, claiming herd immunity in India right before somewhere between 1-3 million died, to the point of having to apologize for it. https://twitter.com/MehdiHasanShow/status/1489404410669277190 https://twitter.com/MehdiHasanShow/status/148940441066927719...
gwd 4y ago
You know what also causes myocarditis? COVID-19 [1]. So the choices were: 1. Don't pressure young people to get vaccinated. Nearly everyone who's unvaccinated eventually catches COVID-19. Some of them would have severe reactions and die; or spend time in a hospital, taking up space and delaying care for others, causing those other people to die. Nearly all of them would pass COVID-19 on to other people, many of whom would be older and die. Some of them would develop myocarditis and die. 2. Pressure young people to be vaccinated for COVID-19. Some of them would develop myocarditis and die. #2 is strictly better than #1. Sometimes in life there are no good options; only not-so-great options and very bad options. [1] https://www.beaumont.org/health-wellness/blogs/myocarditis-risk-associated-with-covid-19-infection https://www.beaumont.org/health-wellness/blogs/myocarditis-r...
- ccn0p 4y ago
  One of the cruxes of the issue is what constitutes "pressure". Should we block children from going to school in order to "pressure" them forcing the risk of #1 on them rather than allowing parents to make their own choices?
- addingadimensio 4y ago
  You still get Covid after you are vaccinated. Fun fact if you are vaccinated before you catch Covid you cannot develop an immunity to the nucleocapsid is this good is this bad I don’t know tune in in 10 years when we know more
  - udp 4y ago
    > if you are vaccinated before you catch Covid you cannot develop an immunity to the nucleocapsid Do you have a reference?
    - addingadimensio 4y ago
- RansomStark 4y ago

by danhak 4y ago

scarmig 4y ago

Why should the companies be held liable? This was a government project enforced by the gun; the companies didn't force anyone to take their vaccines, and there's not a way they could have made them meaningfully safer given the timelines.

krona 4y ago
Then why did most of them sell it for profit?
burner990 4y ago
My employer wouldn't let me go to the office or even any offsites or outdoor actives (i.e. a picnic) until very recently. (Despite my approved religious exemption and "requiring" all employees to work in the office). If that isn't coercion to take an experimental vaccine i don't know what is.
- threeseed 4y ago
  a) I wouldn't class it as experimental when hundreds of millions of people have taken it. b) It sounds like your employer did the right thing to balance your rights versus those of the people you work with.
  - addingadimensio 4y ago
    If an experiment is big enough it becomes a statistic
  - burner990 4y ago
    > I wouldn't class it as experimental when hundreds of millions of people have taken it. that just means we're experimenting on hundreds of millions in real time. That was the whole point of the "emergency use". > your rights versus those of the people you work with no, employees don't have a legal "right" to work in a fully vaccinated office. That would imply that even if an employer wanted to give someone an exemption, then any employee could veto it.
- curiousgal 4y ago
  > approved religious exemption The wording is a telltale sign that the exemption is pure BS.
  - TheCrownedFox 4y ago
    You might not like that the exemption exists, but it's legal in the USA. Would you rather that religious beliefs were not respected by the government?
    - oneoff786 4y ago
      I would prefer the government was completely indifferent to religious beliefs. Because any belief can be construed as religious if you’re willing to take the position that religion is stupid and you don’t care about optics. So yeah, I would prefer beliefs not garner you special privileges
      - TheCrownedFox 4y ago
        What special privileges are being garnered? The topsy-turvy world of the religious person existing as the exception rather than the rule is quite odd to me. But regardless, in the USA the religious exemption policy is incredibly diverse and welcoming, you are correct on that. You do not even need to communicate with your God in expressible ways to other people. What should be the limit on someone's divine communication and the restrictions upon the government they live under?
        oneoff786 4y ago
        > What special privileges are being garnered? The exemption > What should be the limit on someone's divine communication and the restrictions upon the government they live under? None. But your definition of divine communication should not override otherwise unrelated rules.
        TheCrownedFox 4y ago
- lazyasciiart 4y ago
  Seems reasonable to me. They want everyone to be at the office and vaccinated, but they’re not allowed to fire you because “religion”, so they made special accommodations to let you continue working without making all of their other employees have to be around you. You appear to be mad that your “exemption” wasn’t enough to make them pretend you were vaccinated?
  - burner990 4y ago
    But no accommodation to go to the company (outdoor) events and hear talks from the executives? > You appear to be mad that your “exemption” wasn’t enough to make them pretend you were vaccinated? I had blood test proof of antibodies but its just about "feel goods". And they didn't require boosters, just the first 2 doses from over a year ago, so yes its non-sensical and purely political (not based on science).

Eisenstein 4y ago

We require young people to get vaccinated as a rule in order to obtain education. Every medical intervention involves risks. So does taking a shower or taking the bus to school. We all have to take risks and some of them are mandated for the good of society. There were very good indications that the vaccine would prevent spread. Public policy decisions which cost lives are not unusual and although tragic, are often necessary. For instance should we use the entire yearly budget of a hospital to cure one child, or let that child die in order to fund daily operations? These questions have no 'right' answer and no matter what was decided there is going to be criticism and errors which result in less than optimal or even tragic outcomes. Looking back in hindsight and using the knowledge we now have, I would say that the biggest errors made during the pandemic by public policymakers (besides disbanding the pandemic team and having a leader who was looking at everything in the lens of a what was personally good for him at that moment) was in messaging. If we can use this to craft a better way to handle public messaging in the future then perhaps we can avoid a lot of the negative societal effects which we are now dealing with -- specifically lack of trust in scientific institutions, division based on ideology and not evidence, and the spread and enabling of conspiratorial thinking.

blue039 4y ago
- dang 4y ago
  Could you please not fulminate and call names in HN comments? You can make your substantive points without any of that, and it would be in your interest, because comments like this only discredit your viewpoint. I realize how frustrating it is to hold a minority/contrarian view, but why hand people flaming reasons to dismiss you? All it does is weaken your own position, and you're poisoning the ecosystem by doing it. You can weaken your position if you want to, but it's not ok to poison the ecosystem. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
hammock 4y ago
>There were very good indications that the vaccine would prevent spread. Now that we know that to be not true, do you support removing the covid jab from the schedule required in school?

prpl 4y ago

it’s not entirely likely the dead were at a low-risk of death by the actual virus

lanstin 4y ago

As we also coerce babies into screening for various diseaaes and for vax against the diseases that afflict societies without this science. That is how it works. That is why we mostly don't die from infectious diseases for the first time since we built cities.

gfodor 4y ago
Not for an emergency use drug that doesn’t maintain herd immunity for a disease that is minimally harmful to children and is under immense selective pressure to break out of the vaccine. Maybe you’ve got a bad mental model because of the word “vaccine.” This is not a vaccine of the kind we give children, in terms of what it prevents and the extent of data and knowledge we have of its side effects.
- spacefracas 4y ago
  This is incorrect. Of the vaccines that are given to children, none prevent infection. All significantly prevent disease and death.
  - gfodor 4y ago
    This feels like pure revisionism. The purpose of the vaccination programs for children is not to prevent severe disease or death, though that is a nice benefit. The purpose, and manifested effect, is to maintain population herd immunity due to the fact these vaccines radically reduce the chance of the child acting as a vector. The consequence is a vastly reduced incidence rate across the whole population due to this network effect vs a scenario with no mandate. This was widely understood to be the ethical justification for mandating these vaccines: it led to a collective benefit, counterfactually preventing massive suffering across many individual, a benefit which outweighs the risk to the individual from taking these drugs. This fundamental premise is entirely not the case for this vaccine program, which does not come close to helping with herd immunity for a disease we now acknowledge is endemic, and also happens to have a wildly different relative risk profile for children vs the other vaccines we mandate.

Ensorceled 4y ago

> We claimed that vaccinated people would not spread the virus. Who is "we", I have never seen anything other the claims that there were claims. Can you point me to an epidemiologist that made this claim. > And we gave the companies producing these vaccines blanket legal immunity from any potential liability. We have ALWAYS given vaccine companies blanket legal immunity. This isn't a new thing and there are good reasons for it.

hammock 4y ago
>Who is "we", I have never seen anything other the claims that there were claims. Can you point me to an epidemiologist that made this claim. https://twitter.com/guccibase/status/1488297386208378889 https://twitter.com/guccibase/status/1488297386208378889 Included in the video: Rochelle Walensky, Monica Gandhi
- Ensorceled 4y ago
  Ah, by "we", you mean politicians. These clowns are also all saying it's 100% effective which was known to be false from day 1.
  - hammock 4y ago
    You asked for an epidemiologist. I gave you two of the world's foremost practicing infectious disease experts : Rochelle Walensky, MD, MPH, Mass General chief of Infectious Diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital; and Monica Gandhi MD, MPH, Associate Chief of the Division of HIV, Infectious Diseases, and Global Medicine at UCSF. It seems you're being intellectually dishonest
    - ceejayoz 4y ago
      Monica Gandhi has been repeatedly wrong, claiming herd immunity in India right before somewhere between 1-3 million died, to the point of having to apologize for it. https://twitter.com/MehdiHasanShow/status/1489404410669277190 https://twitter.com/MehdiHasanShow/status/148940441066927719...

gwd 4y ago

You know what also causes myocarditis? COVID-19 [1]. So the choices were: 1. Don't pressure young people to get vaccinated. Nearly everyone who's unvaccinated eventually catches COVID-19. Some of them would have severe reactions and die; or spend time in a hospital, taking up space and delaying care for others, causing those other people to die. Nearly all of them would pass COVID-19 on to other people, many of whom would be older and die. Some of them would develop myocarditis and die. 2. Pressure young people to be vaccinated for COVID-19. Some of them would develop myocarditis and die. #2 is strictly better than #1. Sometimes in life there are no good options; only not-so-great options and very bad options. [1] https://www.beaumont.org/health-wellness/blogs/myocarditis-risk-associated-with-covid-19-infection https://www.beaumont.org/health-wellness/blogs/myocarditis-r...

ccn0p 4y ago
One of the cruxes of the issue is what constitutes "pressure". Should we block children from going to school in order to "pressure" them forcing the risk of #1 on them rather than allowing parents to make their own choices?
addingadimensio 4y ago
You still get Covid after you are vaccinated. Fun fact if you are vaccinated before you catch Covid you cannot develop an immunity to the nucleocapsid is this good is this bad I don’t know tune in in 10 years when we know more
- udp 4y ago
  > if you are vaccinated before you catch Covid you cannot develop an immunity to the nucleocapsid Do you have a reference?
  - addingadimensio 4y ago
RansomStark 4y ago